Cellphone video reignites Sandra Bland case

Wednesday

HOUSTON — State Trooper Brian Encinia leans through the open driver's side door toward 28-year-old Sandra Bland and shouts: "Get out of the car now!"

"Why am I being apprehended?" asks Bland, who allegedly changed lanes without signaling. As the exchange escalates, Encinia pulls a stun gun from its holster and aims it at her.

"Get out of the car!" Encinia screams. "I will light you up!"

Three days later, Bland would be found dead in an apparent suicide in Waller County Jail. On that July day in 2015, she was recording him on her cellphone.

Dallas television station WFAA, in partnership with a nonprofit, Investigative Network, published the 39-second recording Monday, rekindling interest in a nationally watched case that authorities had considered closed.

The video offers a new perspective on the controversial and highly scrutinized exchange, also recorded in footage from Encinia's dashcam that the Texas Department of Public Safety released soon after the incident.

News about Bland's video raised questions about who had seen it, why it wasn't publicly released and whether it was properly disclosed to attorneys.

Cannon Lambert, who represented Bland's family in a federal civil suit against Encinia and others, told Investigative Network reporter Brian Collister he had never seen the recording.

In the WFAA broadcast, Bland's sister Shante Needham wiped under her eyes with a tissue and said to Collister: "Open up the case, period."

But the DPS officials said in a statement Tuesday that the agency complied with its obligations to provide information to attorneys in the case, a process known as discovery. Bland's video, the statement said, was identified in a report available to attorneys.

Marc Rylander, spokesman for the Texas attorney general's office, which represented DPS in the case, said that agency also complied with discovery requirements.

"No videos related to this case were concealed," Rylander said in a prepared statement.

Bland's death became a prominent example in the Black Lives Matter movement, bringing attention to what many saw as wrongful police treatment of African-American men and women.

Bland's mother, Geneva Reed-Veal, filed the wrongful death suit in federal court against Encinia, Waller County jailers, Waller County and the DPS. She agreed to settle it for $1.9 million.

The encounter with Encinia also led to a criminal case: After her death, a grand jury indicted Encinia for perjury, arguing that he lied about his reasons for pulling her out of her car.

Both sides in that case said they received the video as evidence.

"There's nothing new here," said Pheobe Smith, special prosecutor in the criminal case.

Encinia would have faced up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine for the misdemeanor charge. It was dismissed when he promised never again to work as a peace officer.

The trooper's defense attorney, Chip Lewis, said the ordeal was "life-altering." Encinia was threatened, moved and is now working in the private sector, Lewis said.

Release of the video stirred up unnecessary pain for Bland's family, Lewis said. But he said there was no criminal wrongdoing on Encinia's part.

Lewis contends that the dash cam video shows Bland reaching in her car for something the viewer cannot see. He said it was then necessary for Encinia to get her out of the car.

Lambert, the family's attorney, saw it otherwise.

"He sees exactly what's in her hand," Lambert said to Collister, the television reporter. "How can you tell me you don't know what's in her hand when you're looking right dead at it?"

State Rep. Garnet Coleman, a Houston Democrat who in 2017 championed the Sandra Bland Act to improve mental health treatment for those jailed, said the video offered important new perspective.

Coleman said he intends to ask the DPS and the attorney general's office in a hearing whether the video was made available to the family's attorney in a way that he could find it.

"I think it's good to ask questions," Coleman said.

The two Democrats from Texas running for president, former U.S. Rep. Beto O'Rourke and former U.S. housing secretary Julian Castro, called on Twitter for another look at the case.

"There must be full accountability and justice," O'Rourke wrote.

In the video, the screen shakes as Bland gets out of the car.

"Really? For a failure to signal?" she asks Encinia. "You're doing all of this for a failure to signal?"

She continues: "Let's take this to court. Let's do it."

"Put your phone down," he yells repeatedly.

The viewer sees her feet in white sandals.

The video ends.

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